Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom - Response

I really liked this article, and I thought it made a lot of excellent points about culture in the classroom.  I particularly liked the statement by Duncan-Andrade and Morrell that said "Our purposes as educators are not to replace one dominant ideology with another."  Instead, we should strive to make "students more critical consumers of all information that they encounter in their daily lives."  This statement is important because it emphasizes how everything we teach needs to have a real-world application.  Once our students graduate and leave our classrooms, they will become citizens and may not encounter "literary" texts in their adult life, such as Moby Dick or Shakespeare, but they will encounter those "hegemonic texts like local, state, and national legislation ... labor-management agreements, professional contracts, [and] mortgage offers."  We need to empower our students with the skills they need to be critical of the world that they are a part of.  Knowledge becomes wisdom when it is put into practice, and as educators, it is our job to help students learn how to apply mental processes to handle real-life situations.

Because it is important that we prepare our students for the "real world," I really liked how this article commented on the overt prestige of certain texts that are deemed "literary" (i.e. the classics) and explained how "popular culture" is seen to be "base, common, and unsophisticated" by comparison.  However, popular culture is our students reality, so it should not be overlooked.  I agree that there is much "pedagogical potential [in] tapping into young people's everyday experiences."  By making connections between "literary" texts and popular culture, both will become more meaningful and impactful for our students, and an understanding of one will help foster understanding for the other.  Additionally, implementing popular culture into pedagogy will increase the level of student interest and engagement.

I also really liked the pedagogical practices employed by Duncan-Andrade and Morrell.  I like how they "foregrounded social critique and social praxis [into their] curriculum and pedagogy" because it made the learning so much more personal and realistic.  By being given opportunities to critique and examine society, these students were able to get a better understanding of the world they live in.  And when students understand their world, or their reality, they will have a better idea of how to deal with it.